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Classic and Contemporary Poetry


TO KEEP YOUR OWN by DOUGLAS MALLOCH

First Line: BEAUTY, MY DEAR, IS NOT OF FACE
Last Line: TO BRING HIM TO HIS DOOR.

Beauty, my dear, is not of face,
Is not of form alone:
The years will come, and time erase
The beauty you have known;
Then you will need some other grace
To keep your man your own.

To hold him here, so proud, so fond,
Of beauty now the thrall,
You need another, better, bond,
When other years befall --
In beauty's springtime look beyond
The springtime, after all.

As one attracted by a rose,
So lovely to the sight,
Finds, as its lovely lips unclose,
The rose's soul of white,
A perfume he did not suppose,
An infinite delight --

So I would give the one I wed
Beauty, and something more:
Lips that are kind as well as red,
Love in a golden store --
These are the things, when youth is fled,
To bring him to his door.



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